Hamilton on Verstappen - we will "be sick of each other" by season end

Lewis Hamilton believes he and Max Verstappen will "be sick of each other" by the end of the season given their current duel for the F1 title.

For the third successive race, the Mercedes and Red Bull drivers again occupied the top-two places, with Hamilton claiming his 97th career win and 150th points finish with Mercedes by taking the chequered flag in Portugal on Sunday.

The seven-time F1 champion now holds an eight-point lead over Verstappen, with the ebb and flow of their championship battle expected to continue throughout the year.

Suggested to Hamilton the situation between himself and Verstappen was tight, he replied: "It’s very tight.

"As you can see it is a great fight between Mercedes and Red Bull and we will be pushing each other right to the last race.

"We’re going to be sick of each other at the end I would imagine, or sick of racing because there are so many races."

The duo have also now been involved in a wheel-to-wheel duel in all three races to date, doing so twice in Portugal after Verstappen passed Hamilton at the restart before the Briton gained a measure of revenge a few laps later.

Declaring himself and the team "massively excited and driven to be in the fight with Red Bull," Hamilton added: "This weekend, I feel like maybe Red Bull lost a little bit of performance.

"I don’t think we improved from the last race to here but I think they took a sidestep closer to us, for whatever reasons.

"But this is great. This is what we all live for, what we live and breathe for, to get up and fight and try and pull out the smallest bits of performance to be able to fight a great competitor."

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